Not just an atheist, but a liar as well. And not about politics, but about a colleague, maybe even a friend.
In an essay after Steve Allen’s death, he said that the obits written about Allen left out the fact that Steve was a student of the Bible who was obsessed (my word, not Rooney’s) with exposing its flaws. And while it is true that Allen was an atheist for much of his life, in his last few years he described himself as “an involved Presbyterian.” For this lie and essays about religion that compared God to Santa Claus, Rooney won the Emperor Has No Clothes Award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Meanwhile, though I don’t have the facts to make it a solid conclusion, I suspect that Allen is just another in the long line of people (such as Lew Wallace and Josh MacDowell) who decided to disprove the Bible and ended up transformed by it.
I hope he repented, but whether he did or not he has met the Emperor of the Universe, and he ain’t Santa.
Steverino? I thought he was Catholic—albeit, of the lapsed (and divorced and remarried) variety.